Category: I Am Traveling

Around the House, health, I Am Traveling

a whirlwind kind of week…

Last week & the weekend went by far too quickly.  To sum up (this may take a while):

Wednesday: Three playdates in one day=crazy lady Lisa.  We had one at the park with a mom’s group + a friend with two kids.  Then in the afternoon we had our first-ever bring-a-kid-home-with-us-from-school playdate for David.  After dinner we had a playdate for Nick, sort of.  My friend B’s husband is a gamer and Nick went over to try it out, while the kids and I hung out with B & her kids.  It was a very long evening and things did not go quite as planned, but we did get to see a fabulous lightning storm on the way home, so that was at least something.

Thursday: I dropped the two older boys at school and ran five errands (with the baby & all the in-and-out nonsense with the carseat) and then collapsed in a heap.  I had a 101 fever and could not stop coughing.  It was bad.

Friday: Still sick.  Thought I might have to skip the bookstore/wedding extravaganza weekend.  Took the boys to Putt-Putt in the afternoon after I started feeling better.  They loved Putt-Putt.  Oh my.  (The Wii Sports package made my children so much more interested in sports, oh yes.)  At some point Nick realizes that he left no money in the account after bill-paying for me to take anything with me on the trip.  I was not amused.

Saturday: Not sick anymore.  Birthday money in hand, I left for DFW & bookstores & wedding.  Whirlwind crazy day with many bookstores & food at the Great Outdoors & Macaroni Grill & seeing two of my favorite people (Steph and Mikie).  Eventually got to the wedding of Gooch & Christi, after hotel map/google insanity and not-nearly-enough-time-to-get-ready (so if my hair was weird, now you know why).  The wedding was awesome, with Star Wars music & wookie sounds at the end and “We’ll talk about that later” in the vows.  The reception was even better.  There were pages for everyone to “be creative” with for the guest book.  Many people did not bother doing both sides, but mine was filled up front and back (one side with “old style paper blogging” of naughty quotes and the other nicely done for the scrapbook page.  There was an enormous amount of enthusiastically bad dancing.  Nothing was set on fire, but a lot was toasted over those little candles.  Saw lots and lots of people I haven’t seen in ages, which was fabulous, and a Girls Day Out was mentioned for the future, which I am looking forward to.  We headed out around 10:45 because we were exhausticated, but apparently things didn’t go on much longer than that.    (my meager amount of photos at flickr)

Sunday: Got up far too late and started the day at another bookstore.  Went to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch, which I’d never been to, but had heavenly cheesecake (Nick will learn to make the one I had; it was Lemon Raspberry).  Then I had to leave for home.  Came home, we each played one game on Wii Play (which was David’s present from Aunt Steph), then turned around and left for Bible study.  Discovered our IRS refund in the mailbox (which would have made the weekend less worry-making.  oh well, that’s what credit cards are for.).  Had pizza for dinner, watched the very first episode of the Care Bears tv show, and went to bed.

Today: Woke up late, in a panic, but not too late.  Took big kid to school, went to the bank, the gas station, the grocery store, and took a walk, all before 9am.  Then we cleanedcleanedcleaned and ate lunch.  Then I put the baby in his crib and told Ben not to bother me because it was “quiet time” and wow, I haven’t heard a peep for an hour now.  It’s so cool!  (He’s asleep, btw.)

I Am Traveling

Not particularly dead

After a long, boring saga of non-internet connectivity (solved by a new-to-us cable modem) and illness (baby’s bronchitis, Ben’s virus, Nick’s flu), we decided to make a break for it and come down to CS.  The kids and I arrived last night and are here through Saturday morning.  So far we’ve watched movies, rode bikes, toured campus, and eaten far too much.  It’s been good.

(Oh, and we broke the printer…or it committed suicide; I’m not sure which.)

health, I Am Traveling

Fabulous weekend

I had a fabulous weekend (well, mostly Saturday). We drove down to CS Friday afternoon & got there in time to have Freebirds for dinner.

Saturday morning I got up, showered, and got to spend the whole day with Steph. We had an enormous breakfast burrito, saw a cute blue fish bowl, and harassed a hostess. After that I shopped Steph’s shelves & returned a large box of books to her (I found several more when I got home that had been wandered out of the box by small children).

Then we hit two bookstores and a new chocolate store (how was yours? mine was icky, but Nick says the mango was all right). I got slightly less than a ton of books and even managed to easily talk down my cashier $6 on an audiobook of Eric Idle reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which my kids looooved but I was a bit unimpressed by).
After all the book-y goodness, we checked in with the boyfolk & then hit the theatre to see 27 Dresses. We got there and encountered twenty thousand small girls all squealing about Hannah Montana (and I continue to realize that God did a good thing by not giving me girls. I cannot tolerate squealing.) 27 Dresses was cute, yet predictable, which was a relief, as Steph and I do not have a good track record with movies.

Went back to check on boys, then dragged out our husbands for dinner at Fitz’s & milkshakes at the Chicken. YUM! There were many children at the bar, which led to much quoting of Sweet Home Alabama: “You’ve got a BABY! In a BAR!”

Afterwards, Nick and I went to Specs and wandered delightedly through the aisles. I got some Winter Bourbon Cask Ale, which was not as good as it sounded (I’d failed to note the fine print that read “and Vanilla Bean.” Ah well. Someone can have it at the shindig.*

Today I went to church with my parents & kids. There were a bunch of Muslims there, as they were having an inter-faith dialogue later in the afternoon. The Muslims brought Noah’s Pudding, which has garbanzo beans & navy beans in it and yet, still, tastes good.  After church, Steph dropped by with our Christmas presents (I got a cupcake holder; it’s adorable. Now I need to make cupcakes!). We also got a nifty train shaped cake mold. The kids took one look at it and said “Can we do that? With all the candy? Right now?!” Umm, no. We had no ingredients. Nor food, really, for that matter.

Nick watched the SuperBowl while the kids watched Care Bears (or as Ben would say “Care-a Bear-as” and I dug through old journals trying to recreate the health record that the neurologist apparently lost (that I don’t have a copy of either). Nick’s team won the SuperBowl (I actually watched for the last 10 minutes of game clock time) and House afterwards was really good, too.

All in all, fabulous weekend.

*More about that in a post to follow

Around the House, Everywhere But Home, I Am Traveling

back to normalcy

Yes, I am still alive. No, no one asked. I just assumed someone out there might care. Hmm.

In any case, I’m home again. I’ve actually been home since Friday night, but my best friend came up for the weekend and we spent the time playing instead of doing useful things.

Last week I flew to California to meet my birthmother and my half-brother. The week went really well, much better than I expected. They’re very nice people. We exchanged gifts, did some much needed talking about important things, had a few meals. It was nice.

The weird part is that I felt like I was gone for six months and my outlook on life has totally changed. I hadn’t thought much before about all the things I have and all the wonderful trips I’ve been on and stuff. Now it’s all that I think about. I am so totally blessed in life. It could have been so very different for me. I just…wow. Yeah.

We’re all going to keep in touch. It was a nice visit. Hopefully they’ll come out to visit me once I’ve moved into a house.

In other news, we’re house hunting again. We have an awesome realtor and we know where we’re looking and what kind of house we’re looking for. We think we’ll prolly find one within the next month or so. I have no idea how we’re going to get out of our apartment lease early, but we’ll deal with that when the time comes.

I spent yesterday redecorating my bedroom. It needed it. I repainted some picture frames, framed some other art, hung it all up. I also made a canopy of sorts for my bed, which looks awesome. I’m working on painting my dresser blue. I’ve got it half-way done and Nick is bringing me more paint when he comes home tonight. 🙂

Today I’m working on a picture album for last year. Yeah, I know, I should have had that done before my trip to California, but some things just take longer to get to than others. Oh well.

Have a great day!

I Am Traveling

Bleh.

Bleh. Everything that could work against me getting to my parents house has. Double bleh. It’s just been a bad day. I’m tired and I hate having to change not only David’s clothes, but my own due to various messes. Oh well. At least the hash brown casserole at Cracker Barrel was good.

Good night folks.

Computers and Internet, I Am Traveling

I have a new cell

I have a new cell phone! WHOOP! I’m very happy about this. It’s uber-spiffy. It’s teeny tiny and it’s blue-and-silver and matches my latest new watch. It’s so nifty! *bounces all around*

Best of all, I’ll be able to take it to CS with me and call Nick whenever I want. Yay!

🙂

Oh, and the baby is taking another nap…what can beat that?

I Am Traveling

So I’ve been slacking off…

So I’ve been slacking off on journalling again, sue me.

Saturday night the family headed out to Melanie’s party. I had baked some lovely cookies for it. We got there and admired the lovely (and huge) apartment before eating all the food in the house. Ok, so we didn’t eat that much, but Melanie and I did have to make a trip to the grocery to buy some more non-alcoholic beverages, as there were more children there than she had thought there’d be. We had a lot of fun, I got nicely toasted, we danced and played games. It was a nice evening. And best of all: there were no cookies to take home! Yay!

Saturday, our little family headed out to the Fort Worth Zoo, accompanied by the Balderas family (Nick works with the dad, Dan). We spent five hours hoofing it along and managed to finally see everything there was to see. It was a very long, but very enjoyable day.

Nick and I have come to an arrangement to get me down to CS in time for Halloween. He’s going to drive me half-way there and my parents are going to pick me up in Waco. They haven’t seen David in a month, and since it’d be two weeks until we would be getting there, they really wanted me and David to come down now since it’s a holiday and all.

In any case, I’ll be in CS for a week. Don’t know how much I’ll be posting here while I’m there, but I’ll attempt to keep in touch.